Page 102 of Heart of the Shadow King

And yet, she holds it. Lightly, gently. Her forehead is pressed to its bone-plated brow. Their eyes are closed, their breaths synchronized.

I stare in wonder, dumbstruck and afraid. My numb lips move, trying to form her name:Faraine, Faraine . . .

Dust settles on my shoulders. Glinting motes, shining with inner life even in the midst of destruction. The Garden of Org still surrounds me, the mighty stones no longer glowing. The only light in this dark space emanates from the dust which coats my skin and covers the small figure I hold in my arms.

I gasp, my dazzled gaze sharpening. “Faraine?” Swiftly I wipe the glittering crystal dust from her face, revealing her still, pale features. Her expression is calm. Her brow is smooth, her lips gently parted. And I know suddenly what this dust is:jor-dust. The residue of that crystal shell which had coated her.

Oh gods, does she breathe? I press my ear to her chest. A heartbeat, strong and steady and unmistakable sings in my ear. Choking on a sob, I cradle her against me, stroke her hair, rock her back and forth. I find that I’m praying, singing old troldish songs of praise I’d forgotten I knew. I don’t know how long we remain thus. It might be forever. This might be the only heaven I will ever know. If so, I am grateful. And I will remain here, seeking no other existence. Just let me be with her. Let me hold her and know she is near.

Then she stirs.

A shock like fire bursts through my veins. I stare down into her face, watch her fair brows knit together. “Vor?” she murmurs, and my heart soars up through the caverns of this world and flies away across the sky.

“Faraine! Faraine, my love!” My mouth finds her brow, her cheek, her jaw, her lips. She tries to respond to my ardor, but she is weak. Her trembling fingers lightly touch my cheek. Perhaps she finds strength enough to instill some measure of calm, for I find that I can breathe again. I sit for a long while, simply holding her. Unable to speak or think. Simply being.

After a time, she draws back. Just enough to look up at me. Her eyes are the same eyes I have known from the beginning: one blue, one gold. Both shining with remnant traces ofurzullight. “She sleeps,” she says.

At first, I don’t understand. Then slowly it occurs to me that the world is not quaking and even now bursting into a billion shards. “Arraog?” I breathe, half afraid of conjuring her with the sound of her name.

But Faraine smiles softly and rests her head on my shoulder once more. “She needed to feel it. The sorrow, the loss. She’d been holding it in for so long.”

Though I don’t pretend to know what she’s talking about, a vision of my wife and the unfathomable being flashes through my mind. “The gods did indeed gift you,” I whisper against her hair. But it wasn’t her magic that was the gift, not in the end. It was her compassion. Her grace. Her ability to see others even as they could not see themselves. Her endurance honed over years of wracking pain. All of it. These were the gifts, the true gifts that made my Faraine uniquely powerful. That made her the answer to all our prayers.

“The gods fashioned you in the image of mercy,” I say. “They sent you to save us.”

“Yes,” she replies simply. “And they sent you to save me.”

45

FARAINE

Maylin’s corpse lies close to the cliff edge. Dried streams of blood from dozens of wounds stain the crystals all around her.

Vor’s sorrow hits me like a knife, sharp enough to make me stagger. I rest a hand against an outcropping of rock and steady myself, pulling on the gentle resonance within. After all this time, it would seem I am learning balance. Pain will always be part of my life—the gods have ordained it thus. But pain is also what gives this existence shape and meaning. It may never be welcome. But I believe I may learn not to fear it at last.

When I am certain I am fortified against the worst of Vor’s feelings, I kneel beside him and the body of his mother. Her face is gory with congealed blood, lined with the agony of her death. This was the death she’d always intended for herself. I realize it now. It was her plan from the moment we met.

“A life for a life,” I whisper and reach for my pendant, the pendant Maylin had sent to me, a gift of both kindness and control. It’s not there; Sul took it with him when he left me in that cell. Is its center now completely dark? Or is the light within restored now that the life-price is paid?

I feel strangely lost without it.

Vor is silent for some while, studying the face of the woman who abandoned him. I wonder how much of her story he knows. Flinching a little, prepared for the hurt it will bring, I reach out and take his hand. Another stab of pain travels up my arm and bursts in the back of my head, but I interlace my fingers with his and hold on. If I can share a dragon’s pain, surely I can share my husband’s.

“I believe in the end, she meant to do right,” Vor says at last, his voice thick with conflict.

“She did,” I answer softly.

Vor nods, as though this is enough. Then he reaches out to close her eyes. When he touches her, however, her body disintegrates into a cloud of glittering dust. He gasps and draws back, and the two of us watch those last glinting remnants float away, out of the garden, spreading across Mythanar down below. It is a strange sight to behold—that proud city brought low but not fully destroyed. It might still be rebuilt were there any troldefolk left to attempt it. But its streets and crumbled buildings are populated only by statues now.

I wonder if Maylin watches us from that thin space of existence on the threshold of death. Did she hold on long enough to see if her plan came to fruition, to see if the dragon was slain? How desperately she needed to make Zur’s sacrifice whole! I doubt she is pleased with the turn of events.

But I told her from the beginning: I am no killer.

I glance up at Vor. His face is stricken, all the joy of our reunion lost in the face of so much tragedy and destruction. In some ways it would have been easier for him if the world had ended. Then he would not be here now to pick up the pieces, to figure out how to be king of this decimated realm.

I tighten my grip on his hand. “She did not abandon you,” I say softly. I don’t know if it’s the right thing, if it’s what he needs just now. But Maylin deserves for truth to be acknowledged. “She devoted her life to devising a way to save you.”

Vor listens quietly as I relate his mother’s sorry tale. He knew little of it, though he perhaps suspected some. When I come to the end, I cannot meet the solemn gaze he turns upon me but drop my eyes to the blood-stained stones on the cliff’s edge. “The truth is,” I say, “Sul was not wrong. Maylin manipulated the feelings of your court to bring about the alliance. Even your feelings for me may not be real.”

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